Incarnate
by Binkatong
Summary: She thought it was a good idea. People had the right to know. But there are some mysteries left unsolved. Oneshot. Rated T for a gory bit. No pairings I can think of. Please review! Wow, I stink at summaries.


Yep, just your average creepy suspense story. I used the steps for remembering past lives from the guide on Wikihow. So, um... Can't think of any good things to tell you. Don't flame. Don't do anything uncalled for. Just... be nice. I like constructive criticism. But please, don't ask for a name. Tis the story of the nameless OC.

**DISCLAIMER: I like TUC. I didn't write TUC. I wish I did, but no. Life is so unfair. I didn't come up with steps, either. I don't really own anything.**

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She smiled at the computer screen. These theories, these ideas, they all seemed so unreal and out of the ordinary. She admitted, she was skeptic. But she would never know for sure until she tried it. So, like a real scientist, she kept her mind open and questioned her beliefs. What if there is such thing as souls? What if life doesn't just disappear when a person dies? What if there was such thing as reincarnation.

Now she was excited. These were whole new realms of possibility- and if she could prove them right, she would be famous. She would get money, awards. But best of all, people would finally know. They wouldn't just guess and believe, they could be sure what happened after death. This was her chance to do something good.

She didn't have a clue what the scientific explanation might be, but maybe after this test she would. She needed to understand it, experience it. It may be right. She read the passage over again. Nothing you can't do with an open mind and some quiet. She had plenty of both. The house was deserted, anyway.

She turned off the lights, pulled down the shades, and laid on the couch, reviewing the steps over in her head. Lay down in a quiet, dark place: check. Hands by her side: check. Now to relax. She breathed in and out slowly and heavily, glad her brother wasn't here to bug her. She began to feel calm, warm, detached. She sat there for a few minutes, only a bit eager to go on to the next step.

She imagined a sheet of white light enveloping her body. They swirled with different amounts of brightness, forming vortexes and waves. It was beautiful and safe. For a split second she began to question how sane she was, but she reminded herself that it was only self-hypnosis before she lost her concentration and broke the trance.

_White protective light, keep me safe, _she thought, mouthing the words. _White protective light, keep me safe…_

Every time she repeated this, the light around her seemed to flash and thicken, forming an impenetrable wall against bad thoughts and feelings. At least, that's what it was supposed to do. And it was working so far. She continued to repeat the words, each time sinking farther and farther into the comfort of the veil.

She remembered the next part- the next color that came to mind. _Blue_, she thought, unknowingly whispering it aloud. Under the white light, blotches of shimmering blue formed. _Blue protective light, keep me safe…_

In minutes the white had disappeared, replaced by even more comforting ocean blue. This light behaved more like water rather than mist, lapping in sparkle-crested waves. Her eyes darted around behind her eyelids, analyzing her own creation of safety and security. Right now, she couldn't care less about science- this was her world behind her face, her own special space. And it was time to make it something real.

She put her mind to work, picturing a long hallway in her minds eye. She expected a completely gold hall, or a Catholic Cathedral, or even a room made of gemstone. That is what she read, after all, and she suspected it would be influenced by that. But apparently it wasn't- she saw, in perfect detail, a medieval corridor.

The room was completely made of stone, everything decorated with intricate carvings. But the most curious thing was not the magnificent handiwork or the strange, orderly arrangement. It was the actual carvings. She saw each one, in complete and minute detail, pictographs of rats and butterflies and knights with swords and spiders. There were even some that resembled scarab beetles or roaches of some kind. At the end of the hall was a single wooden door. The strange amount of detail set aside, it looked just like the guide said it would.

I tentatively took a small step forward, trying to fill it with purpose. My sneakers squeaked on the floor tiles. The authenticity of it all made my skin crawl, but I kept moving. As I walked on, becoming more confident with every step, I noticed a pattern to the carvings. They told a story, or many stories. I wasn't sure. But I did notice this- on almost every wall, every column, every vase there was the same type of picture. A human and a bat killing a giant rat.

Each and every time I saw one of those, I felt an uprising of anger and bloodlust in my gut. I pushed it down, trying to focus on the task at hand. I was almost to the exit now. The door would be within reach in a few steps. It was the only thing in the room that was carving free- just a simple, old wooden door. For some reason this struck me as odd and rare, like it was the only one of it's kind.

I reached out to the door, the only thing that showed no rats being slain. It was almost a relief to leave the violent carvings behind. I opened the door hastily, almost feeling like something valuable was behind it. Something that would finally ease my pain. What that pain was, I do not know. I stepped into the darkness and closed the door behind me.

My eyes adjusted, and suddenly she could see right through the gloom. She was in a cave, most likely in a series of tunnels. The dark room had three paths leading off of it in sight. Most likely four, because she was seeing through another one. In the main room were two rats, growling fiercely and flexing their claws. I was silently cheering for one for no reason I was aware of. I just felt a strong kinship, like I'd known her forever. And somehow I knew it was a she.

The second rat, on the other hand, she couldn't have loathed more. Just looking at him gave her the same feeling of rage she had in the hall, only ten times stronger. It was a he, she knew. And the same thought flew through her mind several times: _I can't believe he's my father. I don't want him to be my father!_ But she knew he was. She bared my teeth. Her big, square, rodent like teeth…

She was a rat.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to wake up. She wanted to be a skeptic again, thinking it's all her imagination. But she couldn't accept that- she knew what she saw was as real as any memory she'd ever had. It was too realistic not to be. So she sat and watched, trying my best to ignore the fear and love and hatred and wonder that made her fur stand on end.

The female lunged. She squealed in fear and worry, but just as she did the scene dissolved around her. It was replaced by a new scene, but also in a cave. This one was bigger, with a fur-covered nest between two rocks. There was a large carcass of something she didn't even want to identify in the corner, rotting and half-eaten. Beside her sat a silvery female rat, who smiled up at me and began to speak.

The rat's voice was wondrous. The girl was bombarded with soothing sounds of all different tones, coming out from the same mouth. It felt like a chorus of angels was singing as she drifted up to heaven.

"I say we strike as soon as the new regiment of gnawers show up," she said in that same gentle voice. She hardly cared what the silver rat was talking about, as long as she kept talking. "Those filthy killers won't stand a chance against you. You are the king, of course."

Wait, king? She was no king. She wasn't even a boy! _Maybe I was,_ she thought, considering it. Possible. But what did this rat want her to do? Whatever it was, it sounded bad. She opened my maw to go against it, but all the came out was: "Yes, I am the king. They cannot defeat me!"

What was she thinking?

"Good, good," she praised, twirling her whiskers. "You are the Bane. Nothing can defeat you. Not even that puny little warrior. But, to fulfill your destiny and become the true king-"

"But you said I was the true king!" she blurted out.

"You are, Bane, but you must prove it to the rest of the gnawers. Once you kill the warrior, they will respect you, tremble before you. They will never question your authority again. But to do that, you must wait for your time to strike." She turned and faced the direction of the tunnel exit. "There is going to be a very big fight, my master. And you will triumph. This I know."

The scene dissolved around her, leaving her suspended in darkness once more. This was her chance to escape this madness, leave it all behind in the depths of her memory. But she couldn't, curiosity got the best of her. She let the new scene form around her, and suddenly she was staring down at the lifeless body of the silver rat.

She looked up, dumbstruck and angry. Even if she had been a bit deranged, no one had the right to kill her. The first figure that caught her eye was a boy. He was riding on a large, black bat almost as big as herself. The boy was scarred and bloody, and in one of his hands was a crimson coated sword.

Images of the hallway flooded her brain- the carvings of rats and bats killing rats. Always rats. Never roaches or bats or other humans. Just rats. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it- the humans just hated them. They were bloodthirsty monsters. They were killers.

"You killed her!" she roared in anger. The boy whispered to his bat, only making me angrier. "Just like you killed my mother!" She didn't know how she knew this, she just did. She lunged forward, swiping at the two with lethal strength.

The protective aura was working- she didn't feel a thing when the boy hit her. But he seemed to feel it when she hit him. She chipped the bat's wing, the boy's arm, the bat's ear. The only problem was that she was extremely unbalanced, almost falling over on many occasions. During one of these dizzy spells, the young warrior retreated. She wasn't going to let him get away with that. Now all she needed to do was regain her balance-

The rest of the battle was a huge blur. All she could remember was lashing about in wide circles, a hit to the foreleg. That's when she gained clarity again. The boy was to close- he'd never be able to make it past her claws. She whipped them out, snagging the bat's wing. The boy cried out, but that would never stop her. She pulled him forward and closed her jaw around the bat's neck.

The taste of blood filled her mouth. Her rat eyes were wide, anxious to do the same to the boy when she was done. But the twisted happiness was short-lived; the next second the boy's sword was in her heart. She felt it this time, but was only a sharp sting rather than what a sword wound would feel like. Even so, she felt blood trickling out. She let out an unearthly howl and slammed her paw into the warrior's chest.

He flew back, slamming onto the floor. Despite the fact that her vision had blurred, she could still make out the huge gap in his side where she had cut him. Now he would bleed to death. Just like her. She opened her mouth, letting the lifeless bat drop from her jaw. She tried to pull the sword out of her chest, but it was no use. Her eyes glazed over and she gave into the weakness. She had dealt her revenge.

She stumbled to the ground, dead but satisfied.

Her eyes flickered open. She was dazed, still halfway in the trance. But she had no fur, no claws, no wounds. She was awake again.

She rolled off the couch, landing clumsily on all fours. She pulled herself up, still dizzy from exhaustion. She wanted to just forget the whole thing, never think about that experience again. But no, she needed this data for her studies, so she picked up her pen and paper and began to jot down what she just saw.

Replaying the scene in her head, she took notes and wrote down whatever she could remember. It was surprisingly a lot. She paused and reversed it a few times, playing around with the memories like they were a movie. A horrible, realistic, unbelievably painful movie.

As she was jotting down what the silver rat had said, she remembered what she had called her. The Bane. She knew what that meant. _Bane: Noun. Definition- __death; destruction; ruin. _This wasn't good. She dropped her pen. Death, destruction, ruin; maybe the humans weren't the evil ones at all. Maybe they were just like knights, fighting to save their land from the dragon that keeps eating the townsfolk for snack.

Maybe the rats were the bloodthirsty monsters.

Suddenly, she made a realization. What if this was all in her head? What if she was just crazy? She smiled at the thought. Maybe being skeptic was better after all. She would just do her best to forget any of this ever happened. She crumpled up the notes and tossed them in the trash bin.

But she didn't need notes- the memories were burned into her mind for the rest of her long life.

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What a happy ending! XD Don't you want to be the Bane Incarnate? So, review! -puts out tray of reviewer cookies- They're fresh from the oven!


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